It was a back and forth game in more ways than one, as the Minnesota Twins fell 5-4 at Target Field to the Detroit Tigers on a sunny, breezy and — for the most part — pleasant Saturday afternoon.
The Tigers fired the first salvo with a single run in the second inning — from former Twins minor leaguer John Hicks, no less — and the Twins answered with a two-run double in the bottom half off the bat of Jorge Polanco. The Tigers answered back with a pair of runs the next half inning as Nicholas Castellanos and Justin Upton homered in the span of three batters and Detroit was back up, 3-2. Both teams were quiet — at least on the scoreboard, more on that in a bit — until the fifth when Robbie Grossman singled home Joe Mauer to tie the game at three apiece.
The Tigers took the lead for good in the sixth as Castellanos doubled home Mikie Mahtook and James McCann drove home Castellanos on a sac fly to right. That capped the scoring for the Tigers, while the Twins came roaring back in the ninth with a solo home run for Jason Castro — his first as a Twin at Target Field — before Francisco Rodriguez (save, 6) buckled down to get the final two outs, including striking out Mauer swinging on a full-count changeup to end the game.
Neither starter factored in the decision, but it’s hard to sum up why in a short period of time. Let’s dive right in….
Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:
Mejia was all over the place
That much is obvious, as Mejia fanned six batters but also walked three before getting the gate after recording just 10 outs in 70 pitches on the afternoon. Mejia allowed five hits — including two home runs — which got the bullpen working in just the second inning. That’s never a good sign for a young pitcher trying to stave off competition for his job, let alone keep his team in the game.
Mejia was under 50 percent as far as strikes thrown for the better part of the first two innings, and the Tigers were ready for when he started throwing strikes in the third, as two of the first three batters took him deep.
The strike zone didn’t necessarily help Mejia though, either.
Those green boxes are pitches called balls. It looks like Brooks Baseball is a little goofed up from today’s game — it has Mejia throwing 110 pitches when he actually threw only 70 — but it’s not hard to see what effect home plate umpire Jordan Baker had on Mejia, especially at the top of the zone. Near as I can tell, Mejia had something like seven pitches inside or right on the borders of the strike zone that were called balls. That’s got to be a pretty tough pill to swallow when your performance gets you a one-way ticket back to the minors.
The fifth inning was absolutely bananas
It’s kind of difficult to unpack what exactly happened here, but we’re going to try. After Mejia departed, Rule 5 rookie Justin Haley took over to try keep the Twins in the game. The first batter Haley faced was Tigers center fielder JaCoby Jones, and on the fourth pitch he saw, Jones was hit in the lip with a 90 mph fastball. Jones immediately discarded his helmet, and ran clear down the third base line before dropping to his knees in the third base coach’s box so he could be tended to by the Tigers medical staff. Both trainers brought towels to stop the bleeding, and he ultimately needed stitches to close the wound. It’s as bad as it sounds, and no matter what words come after this, we don’t want to lose emphasis on the fact that this was a terrible thing to happen to Jones.
Both Torii Hunter and Dick Bremer said “Ohhhh….” in unison — and shock — on the telecast as the play unfolded. “You hate to see that for any ballplayer,” Hunter continued, tying in his personal experience of being hit in the face by Zack Greinke — then with the Royals — at the Metrodome as Jones left the game and was replaced by Andrew Romine at first base and in center field defensively.
In the moment, it seemed fairly innocuous. Mop-up reliever loses control, hits batter with no ill intent. How could there be ill intent? It was a 1-2 pitch. There were two outs. I combed through Haley’s game logs, and even though he and Jones played at the same levels in 2015 and 2016, none of his hit by pitches came against Jones’ teams. Jones hit a single in eight trips to the plate against Haley’s teams in 2015, and went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles against them last season. Everything should be copacetic, right? At least….relatively speaking?
Apparently not.
One thing about baseball that is very divisive among the community is the policing of unwritten rules. Some of them are more obvious, like respect your opponent, respect the game and don’t throw at us or we’ll throw at you. And while I’ve played baseball for pretty much all of my 31 years on the earth, I’ve always taken that last one to mean “thrown at” with intent. There was clearly no intent from Haley here.
The Tigers saw it differently.
In the fifth inning, Tigers starter Matt Boyd decided to employ some Wild West justice, throwing behind Twins first baseman Miguel Sano on the first pitch with one out after Polanco had struck out swinging. Here’s where the logic escapes me. First of all, usually the “if you hit one of my guys, I’ll hit one of yours” means you hit a player of similar caliber, as far as I’m aware. And there’s no disrespect meant to Mr. Jones, but this isn’t really an eye for an eye. Second of all, Sano represented the tying run, which ironically — or perhaps justly — came around to score when Mauer, who replaced Sano with a 1-0 count, doubled to deep center and came around on Grossman’s single four pitches later.
And again, to reemphasize, shouldn’t there usually be intent for the first batter being hit to escalate all of this nonsense?
Anyway, Sano — an excitable young player as is — as one might expect did not take kindly to a 91 mph fastball thrown behind his back. And he stepped across the plate, and showed Boyd just what he thought of that pitch by pointing out to the mound:
That wasn’t well received by the Tigers, particularly McCann, who stepped up to Sano before Baker got in between them and got his catcher’s mitt in the Twins third baseman’s face. That set Sano off, as he — in his words — shoved back at McCann, though it could be construed as a swing, and all hell broke loose. Both bullpens and dugouts emptied, and by the time all was said and done, Sano and Boyd were ejected — Sano for throwing a punch in the eyes of crew chief Mike Everitt and Boyd for throwing behind him — while McCann managed to remain in the game.
“You knew that was retaliation,” Hunter said on the telecast as things were getting sorted out. Hunter’s initial theory was that Sano was bumped by Baker, but mistakenly thought it was McCann who did it. However, take a look at this image:
This would seem to be fairly damning evidence against McCann, who for what it’s worth did not remove his helmet during the entire ordeal.
McCann’s comments after the game — to his credit, he said he was not sure if he did or did not make contact with Sano — don’t really add up. What did he expect Sano’s reaction was to being nearly hit? To stay in the box and give him another chance to hit him? Boyd wasn’t even aware he was ejected until well after cooler heads had prevailed, while Castellanos pleaded his pitcher’s case to no avail.
Hunter’s comments as things were being sorted out were….let’s just say, interesting. “It was definitely retaliation for JaCoby, and that’s understandable,” he said. “I’m from the old school, and I understand that once your guy gets hit in the face — whether it’s accidental or anything — there’s going to be some retaliation.” Again, that seems like an odd stance to take when it’s not only accidental, but in a tight game against the team’s top player. I mean, did it strategically make sense to get Sano out of the game that way? I guess so. But the interpretation and enforcement of these “unwritten rules” feels….inconsistent and quite frankly, inappropriate.
One thing remains for sure: It’s going to be interesting to see how the Commissioner’s Office sorts this one out.
The fifth inning wasn’t the only time relievers came running out of the pen
The teams used 13 pitchers between them, and those 13 combined for 339 pitches (207 strikes), 21 hits and nine runs allowed, 18 strikeouts and nine walks. Boyd was the only pitcher who threw more than three innings of the entire lot. No wonder the game was played a tight four hours, huh?
Byron Buxton was pinch-hit for in crunch time — again
Buxton was lifted for Castro in the ninth inning, and Castro hit a moon ball that just snuck out to right field (391 feet) to bring the Twins within a run of tying the game against K-Rod with one out in the ninth. The move made tactical sense; not only was Rodriguez a difficult right-on-right matchup for the scuffling Buxton — especially with his trademark changeup — but the Twins needed a baserunner on in front of Brian Dozier, who represented the tying run on deck. Castro, who came into the game with a .365 on-base percentage despite hitting just .214, made a lot of sense from the left side.
The Twins came within a few feet of winning the game, actually
After Castro’s home run, Dozier singled past Dixon Machado at short to put the winning run at the plate in the form of Polanco. On a 1-0 changeup, Polanco hit a drive to right that was caught by Mahtook right here:
Both Bremer and Hunter were convinced it was gone. Mauer followed by striking out swinging on a full-count changeup and the Tigers evened the series at a game apiece.
Roster Moves
The Twins sent Mejia back to Triple-A Rochester after the game. Without the need for a fifth starter for potentially as many as two weeks, it made the most sense to keep him on a regular schedule in the minors while he works through some things. The Twins also put reliever Justin Haley on the 10-day disabled list with right biceps tendinitis.
Corresponding moves will be made in advance of Sunday afternoon’s game against the Tigers, but it seems like the most likely players to be brought up are reliever Buddy Boshers and first baseman/designated hitter Kennys Vargas. Vargas was not in the lineup for the Red Wings against Charlotte on Saturday evening, and Boshers is pretty much the only MLB-ready reliever on the 40-man roster who is ready to come up and give the team some length out of the bullpen.
Pitchers like Randy Rosario, Fernando Romero, Mason Melotakis and Felix Jorge are a ways off, while J.T. Chargois has made just one appearance with the Red Wings this season after spending some time down in the extended spring training program in Fort Myers. Another option might be to put Ryan O’Rourke on the 60-day disabled list — if he’s considered more than a month away, which is possible since he isn’t even throwing right now and will see a doctor next week in Arlington — and add someone like Alex Wimmers, who is off to a bit of a slow start at Triple-A (five earned runs, three home runs allowed in just six innings).
Jose Berrios would be a natural candidate to take over the fifth spot in the rotation, but the honest truth is it could even be Mejia, since 10 days will pass between his demotion and possible return.
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Notes and Quotes
- The loss was the Twins’ sixth in the last eight games.
- Castro’s home run was his first ever of the pinch-hit variety.
- Sano’s ejection was the second of his career. It was Boyd’s first.
- Sano on what went through his mind when the ball was thrown behind him: “It’s something that happens in the game and something I try to handle with a lot of patience. It sucked, because I came out of the game and that’s not fun.”
- Sano on what McCann said: “I don’t want to talk about that, but he touched me — with the glove. That’s when I reacted.”
- Sano on if he was surprised McCann was not ejected: “Yeah, they’re supposed to have ejected him too.”
- Sano on what he said to Boyd: “I just said ‘Watch out; you don’t have a reason to hit me.’ Haley didn’t hit (Jones) intentionally in the face. Nobody wants to hit people in the face. You might hit someone in the leg or something, but never in the face.”
- Sano on if he thought it was retaliation: “Yeah, it was intentional.”
- Sano on if he thought there was potential for retaliation: “No. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think they’d want to hit me or one of my teammates. They need to understand it wasn’t intentional that he was hit in the face. There’s nothing I can do, other than try to be ready to hit the ball and that’s it. I don’t have a problem with anybody.”
- Sano on if it was a push or a punch to McCann: “It was just a shove.”
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